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There are a variety of ways to deal with the Microsoft Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSoD): use System Restore to roll back to a previous state, install updated drivers, boot in safe mode, check for hardware problems, scan for malware, or reinstall Windows.

Then again, you could always buy a gun off Craigslist, take that *&^% box into the back alley, and blow it to kingdom come.

Unfortunately, this method, while likely being very satisfying, could get you arrested for discharging a firearm within city limits, as happened to a Colorado man who told police he was “fed up” after “fighting with his computer for the last several months”.

As The Smoking Gun reports, US police in the city of Colorado Springs on Monday responded to an emergency call about shots fired.

When they arrived, they found that Lucas Hinch, 38, had taken his computer into a back alley and executed it by “[firing] shots into the computer with a handgun, effectively disabling it.”

Effective, indeed, as can be seen in a police evidence photo of the victimised hardware:

Hinch was reportedly cited for discharging a firearm within city limits, according to a police blotter entry bearing the summary description “Man Kills His Computer.”

Hinch told TSG that he had “just had it” after months of exposure to the recalcitrant computer’s BSoD.

The machine was put out of its misery with a 9mm Hi-Point pistol that Hinch had recently found on Craigslist.

Police seized the pistol, but they left the corpse.

Hinch is the operator of a homeopathic herb store he runs out of the home he shares with his girlfriend and formerly with his computer.

Hinch administered lead slugs to the computer in the alley in back of this homeopathy store.

My Dictionary of American English disagrees, suggesting that it’s the composition of the ammunition rather than the weapon from which it is discharged:

slug [noun]: (chiefly N. American) a bullet, especially one of lead

(Ironically, at least in the UK, shotguns no longer fire lead ammo. It’s made of stainless steel now. Turns out that showering lead balls over the countryside where animals eat them is a toxic hazard. Who knew!)

Having said that, those holes look like regular FMJs to me. So now we argue about what percentage of a bullet must be lead for it to be a slug.

If I lived in that city I would not shop at that guy’s store. He seems to be a few cards short of a full deck. It was planned stupidity. Since he shopped online for a gun. If he tossed his computer against a wall in the alley while childish he wouldn’t be going to court. I would definitely think twice about going into his shop, who knows when his madness would focus on a human target. Hopefully he will face court ordered anger management therapy.

Unfortunately discharging a gun within city limits is what he was cited for. I believe you are thinking of the laws that attempt to stop people from firing into the air, not knowing where the ’round’, ‘slug’, ‘bullet’, ‘projectile’ will land.

I’m sure they took the ‘slug’ into the lab to ensure it came from the murder weapon in custody.

I was under the impression he was shooting it in a horizontal direction which in a well populated area and getting cited for it, I consider stupid. Planning out something like shooting a computer in city limits seems quite ignorant, especially when you consider the chance of a ricochet. I stand by my previous statement.

Not that I approve of letting rip with handguns out the back of your shop…but it looks as though he went out into an alley, there was no-one else around, and he plugged the computer full of FMJs with a brick wall behind or a tar road surface underneath. A pretty silly thing to do, because he might get some copper shrapnel back in his eye if the bullet shattered, but as for “the chance of a ricochet,” hmmmmm. Not sure about that.

In other words, he may be able to convince the court that no-one, with the possible exception of himself, was at risk from broken bits of bullet, and that he did consider the path of the bullets and where they’d end up before he fired, so in terms of public safety, there was nothing to worry about.

I presume the laws against letting go with handguns in town are as much about disturbing the peace as about safety, and on that score, he can’t complain about being charged. After all, he did freak someone out enough to call the cops; the cops had to turn up and face a “many shots fired” incident; time was wasted and so on.

The burning question is, what about the hard disk? If is wasn’t encrypted and it wasn’t hit directly..betcha the cops are wrong and he didn’t “effectively disable” his computer. Now that would be an interesting study. Just how fully *did* he kill that computer?